'Distributed Lethality' Is The Surface Navy's Strategy For The Trump Era

Washington
I write about national security, especially its business dimensions.

At the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium near the nation's capital this week, one phrase is dominating discussions of strategy: distributed lethality.

Distributed lethality is a plan to assure U.S. sea control in coming years by dispersing rather than concentrating naval forces, relying on new weapons, sensors, training and tactics to defeat potential aggressors. In the words of Vice Admiral Thomas Rowden, commander of naval surface forces:

By providing a more powerful deterrent, we will dissuade the first act of aggression, and failing in that, we will respond to an attack in kind by inflicting damage of such magnitude that it compels an adversary to cease hostilities, and render it incapable of further aggression."

The USS Chafee guided missile destroyer pulls alongside an aircraft carrier late last year for at-sea replenishment. Destroyers like the Chafee can defeat a host of undersea, surface and overhead threats, but they need longer-range weapons and improved battlespace awareness to fully implement a strategy of distributed lethality. (U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Weston A. Mohr/Released)

Distributed lethality is a departure from past naval strategies, which typically organized action around aircraft carriers and the helicopter carriers at the center of Marine amphibious ready groups. The new strategy relies on resilient networks to coordinate the action of warships spread over vast areas of ocean. Every warship is a potential sensor or shooter in the shared effort, but the ability of enemies to detect, track and target U.S. naval forces is greatly complicated.

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In fact, the new strategy puts considerable emphasis on concealment and deception as a way of both deterring and defeating aggressors. When naval campaigns are organized around a handful of aircraft carriers, it doesn't take a lot of thought for enemies to figure out what their top-priority target should be. But when a campaign is waged by diverse vessels scattered over many hundreds of miles of water, the enemy is challenged in determining where to focus its response.

The strategy was conceived to get greater value out of each surface combatant -- cruisers, destroyers, frigates -- in the fleet. It doesn't necessarily involve submarines, carriers or amphibious warships, but the logic of the new approach potentially applies to all of the Navy's warfighting communities. For instance, a destroyer might detect a threat that a nearby amphibious vessel is best positioned to counter.

Vice Admiral Rowden only began laying out the framework for distributed lethality two years ago, so it is too soon to say whether other parts of the Navy will buy in. But there is little doubt it will become an organizing concept for the surface navy during the Trump years, and most of the warships in the fleet are surface combatants.

Rowden approved a document entitled "Surface Force Strategy" in December that lays out the logic of distributed lethality and explains how the surface fleet must change to implement it. The document states that the objective of surface force strategy is to assure control of the seas, which enables overseas access, deterrence of aggression, power projection and maritime security.

In other words, if the U.S. can't assure control of the seas, a series of other goals aren't feasible either -- in much the same way that command of the air enables other facets of military action on land. The way Rowden explains it, distributed lethality is the most promising strategy for sustaining U.S. sea control in a world where America is challenged by a diverse array of emergent and/or resurgent threats to maritime dominance.

However, posturing for distributed lethality requires the surface Navy to adapt its tactics, talent, training and warfighting tools to a new way of waging war, and the December document identifies where money will need to be spent to make the strategy work. The most important items are weapons and sensors with increased offensive reach, integrated air and missile defense, improved battlespace awareness and high-velocity training.

All of these items will need to be addressed in Trump Administration plans for growing the Navy. It isn't enough to buy more of what the Navy already has. Surface combatants like the Littoral Combat Ship need to be equipped differently. I received some interesting insights into where the gaps are in current capabilities at a January 9 meeting hosted by Lockheed Martin, one of the Navy's top suppliers. Lockheed is a consulting client, but this gathering included leading scholars from a number of think tanks interested in the new strategy.

It was a freewheeling exchange organized around opportunities for shaping the implementation of distributed lethality. There appear to be gaps at each step in the "kill chain" leading from detection of a threat at sea through the decision to act, the actual engagement and subsequent assessment of success (or lack thereof).

Among other things, the current surface fleet needs reconnaissance assets with longer endurance; communications links that better support timely targeting of threats; procedures to optimally pair weapons with targets in a distributed environment; missiles with greater over-the-horizon range; and "deceptors" that can confuse adversaries as to Navy intentions. Unmanned vehicles could be especially useful in closing some of the gaps identified.

Discussion among the scholars at the meeting illuminated a number of issues in implementing distributed lethality. For instance, the visibility of a forward-deployed fleet is useful in deterring the outbreak of war, but a vulnerability in waging it. One expert noted that warships might need to have the autonomy for independent action to cope with a degraded network in wartime.

However, there seemed to be general agreement that Vice Admiral Rowden's strategy could contribute to regional deterrence, enhance the survivability of U.S. forces in wartime, and get more value out of each warfighting asset. So now the question is whether it will be funded. The next few months in Washington will tell that story.

I focus on the strategic, economic and business implications of defense spending as the Chief Operating Officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute and Chief Executive Officer of Source Associates. Prior to holding my present positions, I was Deputy Director of the Securit...